The conversion of rainforest into plantations erodes and restructures food webs and fundamentally changes the way these ecosystems function, according to a new study published in Nature. The findings provide the first insights into the processing of energy across soil and canopy animal communities in mega-biodiverse tropical ecosystems.
Every day, new areas of rainforests are converted into plantations, drastically changing tropical biodiversity and the way the ecosystem functions. Yet, the current understanding of the consequences is fragmentary: previous studies tended to examine either biodiversity or the ecosystem. ...
